


Paradise Lost

by lastSaskatchewanPirate



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Human AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-02-01 11:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12704103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastSaskatchewanPirate/pseuds/lastSaskatchewanPirate
Summary: Thundercracker hadn't seen Starscream in years.  It still wasn't enough time to have forgotten what a colossal pain in the ass he was.





	1. Solitude Sometimes is Best Society

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the Metaphorical Coffee universe, about five years before Roddy meets Megatron on a city bus at rush hour.

It had been almost five years since Thundercracker had last seen his erstwhile commander in person.

It took Starscream less than five minutes to remind him of the myriad reasons for that.

It didn’t help that Starscream sashayed onto the Lynden Pindling International tarmac wearing a ridiculously expensive cream linen suit and carrying a leather duffle that probably cost almost as much as the plane’s last major overhaul. To make matters worse, the fucker actually made the linen suit look fantastic; then again, Screamer could make an actual potato sack look good. Skywarp still had the photos to prove it.

TC returned Screamer’s lazy salute with one of his own, and continued his pre-flight checks while Starscream clambered aboard the de Havilland Otter and stowed his luggage. A polite woof from inside the plane indicated that he’d also made Buster’s acquaintance while he was at it.

Pre-flight done, Thundercracker joined them in the plane. Unsurprisingly, he found Starscream already occupying the co-pilot’s seat and surveying the Otter’s instrument panel with disdain.

“I can’t believe you’re flying this piece of shit,” Starscream groused as they taxied toward the runway. “How the mighty have fallen.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t believe I let you get in my fucking plane in the first place.”

There was silence for a while, broken only by the plane’s engine and sporadic radio chatter from ATC. Six planes ahead of them in the queue – it would be a while before they were airborne.

Starscream groaned dramatically. “Seriously?” His head thunked back against the seat. “I do actually have somewhere to be, you know; does this damn airport actually follow a schedule?”

“You’re on island time now,” Thundercracker pointed out. “Presumably – and, mind you, this is just a guess – since the people you’re meeting are likewise on an island, they should be vaguely familiar with the concept.”

“That is something of a presumption, yes.” Starscream busied himself for a moment with a flurry of texts before dropping the phone back into the pocket of his artfully rumpled shirt. “Well, hopefully that will have some effect …”

Apparently the effect of Starscream’s texting was to get them bumped to the head of the queue. Thundercracker gave him a rather jaundiced glare as he taxied into position.

“Pleased with yourself?”

Starscream shrugged elegantly. “It’s less an indicator of _my_ importance and more an indicator of the social prominence of the people with whom I’m to meet.”

“Uh-huh.” TC waited until he’d actually gotten the Otter into the air before asking the question. “So the people you’re meeting – old friends?”

“Old business associates.” Starscream smiled nostalgically. “Haven’t seen them in quite some time; we … ah. Lost contact for a while.”

“Before or after you’d pissed them off?”

Starscream looked thoughtful. “That’s actually a rather good question … hard to say, honestly. Some people can be so touchy.”

Thundercracker rolled his eyes. “Yeah, funny how that works.”

*

Their destination lay almost directly south-east of Nassau, a tiny speck in the Caribbean between Mayaguna and Little Inagua. It was only an hour and a half by air, which was fortunate as far as TC was concerned, and required a water landing, which was not. An airstrip would have meant Starscream didn’t need to hire a seaplane, wouldn’t have made the connection with his old Air Force buddy, and wouldn’t have called him up in the middle of a very promising lunch with Marissa to demand that TC ferry him from Nassau to a tiny speck of dubious hospitality.

Fortunately, Starscream seemed to be awfully preoccupied with his impending meeting. He spent the vast majority of the flight staring silently out the window, clearly lost in thought and putting all his formidable scheming capabilities into play.

That was just fine with Thundercracker. He hadn’t exactly forgotten how abrasive Starscream could be – that wasn’t the sort of thing that was forgettable without severe head trauma or massive quantities of mind-altering substances – but time and distance had managed to smooth out some of the pricklier memories. Having Starscream sitting within arm’s reach, familiar smirk writ across that dark handsome face, was doing a fantastic job of reminding him.

TC settled himself, resettled his hands on the control yoke, and rolled tension out of his neck. Almost there; and then he’d take Buster for a swim, hang out, maybe work on his latest screenplay, take Starscream back to Nassau, and be done with it. Done with him.

For a few more years, at least.

*

“Fuck,” said Starscream with what struck Thundercracker as totally unnecessary venom under the circumstances.

“What?”

“This is as close as you can get, isn’t it?”

TC shrugged. The Otter was beached, the floats actually resting on the sand; if the tide had been going out, they might actually have something of a challenge taking off. “Unless you wanna have to get out and push when it’s time to leave, then yeah.”

Starscream cursed again. “These shoes were expensive.”

“So take ‘em off.”

Starscream gave him a sardonic look. “Not exactly presenting a professional image, showing up to a business meeting barefoot.”

“Island,” TC pointed out sardonically. “Also, how stupid are you gonna look with wet loafers?”

Given the sour expression on his pretty face, Starscream was forced to accede the point; but no power on earth could make him do so with grace.

*

It was, Thundercracker acknowledged, a lovely little spot, isolated and quiet. The surf broke rhythmically against the sand, tiny jewel-colored crabs scuttled through the mangrove stalks, and the only sound was the relentless wind.

There was no one there.

Starscream – barefoot, though he had unrolled his trouser cuffs to preserve some small measure of his compromised dignity – spun on the spot, throwing his hands out beseechingly. “What …?!”

“Island time,” TC reminded him, and whistled for Buster. “Guess we didn’t need to jump the queue after all.”

Starscream whipped around to glower ferociously, but TC had already waded out into the surf, Buster bounding delightedly beside him, and all Starscream had to glare at was his back.


	2. And Study of Revenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life's a beach and then, if some people have their way, you die.

They had been on the tiny island – too tiny for an actual name, truthfully little more than a glorified sand bar – for two hours now. Given that the tiny island offered absolutely nothing in the way of shade, aside from patchy mangroves that were simultaneously (a) too low to actually offer shade unless one were lying prone and being stabbed to death by a million pokey, oyster-encrusted roots and (b) liberally infested with crab spiders, which were visually intriguing but only from a distance greater than “oh God they're _on my face_ ,” everyone had by now sought refuge in the shade of the Otter’s wings. This meant that they were sitting in damp sand, which was a non-issue to Buster and likewise no big deal to TC, who was wearing his work uniform of threadbare cargo shorts and a decrepit Sail Antigua t-shirt. It could have been a considerably big deal to Starscream, whose impeccable linen suit pants were utterly ruined at this point, but he was long past caring.

Buster was currently napping, sand-encrusted face propped damply on TC’s thigh as he leaned against the Otter’s partially-submerged float. TC was currently writing – or, more accurately, glaring at the blank Word document open on his tablet as though it had personally offended his dog. Starscream was currently sulking, which had started out as throwing rocks and shells into the surf, deteriorated to stomping along the tide line kicking sand, and now presented itself as moody atmospheric staring into the distance.

“Can’t believe I let you interrupt dinner with Marissa for this shit,” Thundercracker muttered. “I was actually getting somewhere, for god’s sake …”

Starscream huffed out an astonished little laugh. “Wow. I guess things really _have_ changed, haven’t they?” TC raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and Starscream shrugged in response. “Just … thought you and ‘Warp were the exception, you know? The fairy tale. What happened?”

“What?” TC blinked, reviewed his last sentence, and shook his head. “ _Oh_. No, not like that. Marissa’s my agent; we were brainstorming this screenplay I’ve been working on. Think I was actually getting somewhere with it – I’ve had an awful block on this one part.”

“So you and ‘Warp …?” Starscream could feign casual with people who didn’t know him very well, and even with a few who did, but Thundercracker had flown with him for far too long to be fooled for even a moment.

“Still together. I mean, he’s on deployment right now, which sucks –“ Starscream nodded sympathetically. God, yes; they’d all been there, separated by duty, cogs in an uncaring machine. “—but he’s loving it. You know how he is. It’s some top-secret crap, too. He’s been attached to a special ops team or something; it’s not like he’s allowed give me details, but he’s just as bad at keeping it zipped as he ever was.”

Starscream’s laugh this time was genuine and fond. “Oh, fuck – you remember the time we were supposed to provide air support on that refinery job?”

“The one in Libya?”

“No, Qatar.”

“Oh god, that was a clusterfuck. Thanks, ‘Warp, good job.”

There was a moment’s silence of the fond reminiscing variety. Starscream idly toed at a broken shell – he’d put his shoes back on, ridiculous or not, upon the discovery that the tiny island was composed primarily of broken oyster shells, chunks of bleached coral, and assorted spiky botanical flotsam – and shoved his hands further into the pockets of his ruined trousers.

“Do you ever miss it?”

“’It?’” Thundercracker echoed carefully. He knew damn well what Starscream meant, but he wanted the bastard to say it.

“Flying together.” Starscream shrugged. “Working together. We made a great team, you know.”

“Yeah,” TC conceded. “The best. And yes, I do miss it sometimes.”

Starscream eyed him knowingly. “Only sometimes?”

Thundercracker met the knowing stare with one of his own. “Yeah. Because the rest of the time I remember entirely too well why I got out of the service. The camaraderie the three of us had? The way we could fly together like we could read each other’s minds? That was amazing, and I miss that every damn day. But the rest of it … no, Screamer, I don’t miss that at all.”

Unexpectedly, Starscream laughed again; and it was genuine and ripe with amusement for all that it was quick and quiet. “That’s fair, I suppose. Probably not a huge surprise that I didn’t like it either.”

“What, you mean the whole ‘following orders’ bit?” TC grinned. “Having to pretend respect for some boot-licking dickhead who couldn’t fly his way out of a paper bag? I can’t _imagine_ what you didn’t like about that.”

Starscream shrugged elegantly. “What can I say – some of us were born for greatness.”

“And yet here you are,” TC pointed out, “down in the muck with the rest of us.”

“Not forever,” Starscream said, and there was a hungry gleam in his eyes that TC knew all too well from all too many pre-mission briefings. “I have a plan, TC, and I’m following it. Just you wait and see.”

Thundercracker sighed, amusement and resignation too tightly entwined to be separated; but that was always how it was with Starscream. He had no doubt that the crazy fucker did indeed have a plan, and that it was probably going to be ninety-five percent successful, and that the five percent where it fell short would irritate the fuck out of Starscream, who held himself to an even higher standard than he held everyone else.

He didn’t say any of that, of course.

“Okay,” TC said amiably, and turned back to the mocking blankness of his Word document. “Send me a postcard from the top when you get there.”

Starscream chuckled. “I’ll invite you and ‘Warp for a long weekend so you can bask in my glory.”

“Yeah, 'cause _that_ sounds fun,” TC deadpanned.

Starscream was gearing up a scathing retort when Buster lifted her head from Thundercracker’s knee and then barked, low and urgent, toward the ocean.

A moment later, both men could hear the mid-range rumble of an outboard motor approaching, and Starscream rose to his feet in time to see a sleek cigarette boat resolve itself.

“Guess these guys take island time really seriously,” said Thundercracker, rising to put his tablet in the Otter’s cockpit.

Starscream was making a valiant effort to regain some semblance of presentability. Naturally, because no ordinary human could have done so, he managed to quickly render himself adequately smooth, unruffled, and relatively sand-free; and where he couldn’t manage crisp perfection he made it look deliberate – a model at a photo shoot, an ad campaign for tropical insouciance.

No wonder so many people hated him.

In fact, hating Starscream was apparently ubiquitous enough among the general populace that the occupants of the cigarette boat, upon arrival, immediately tried to shoot him.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the chapter title is a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost. Yes, I am that annoying.


End file.
